Page 257 of Haunt Me

Who turn around

and

leave.

Wembley

forty-nine

Before the show at Wembley, we spend the entire day sound checking the stage. We always useSaint Hopefor the mic tests, because it’s the most demanding and versatile of all my songs.

The song echoes over and over in the empty arena, until we can get the sound just right.

“Look, Isaiah,” someone tells me, and I look.

It’s Eden.

She’s on the empty stage, parts of it still under construction, and she’s jumping around and dancing toSaint Hope. Dancing to my voice streaming over the megaphones.

I just forget everything I was doing and stand there, mesmerized as she runs around the huge stage like a little kid. But no. She never did that as a little kid, did she?

Tears clog my throat. I have never seen anyone as excited or exuding as much pure joy as Eden is right now. Everyone, the stage workers and the sound crew, stop what they were doing and sit around to watch her quietly, smiling up to their ears. Eden, oblivious, keeps dancing as my voice croons the lyrics I wrote for her in a melody we started composing together.

As the recording goes into the first bridge over the speakers, I catch the eye of one of the sound guys, and I motion to him to cut the track and give me sound on the mic I’m holding in my hand.

He does it, and the music stops. I pick up where my voice left off and go into the next verse seamlessly. Except this time my voice isn’t coming from a recording. It’s coming from me. I climb up to the stage, still singing, and Eden stops dancing as she realizes I’m singing live. She turns around to look for me.

She finds me, as she always will, right behind her, looking at her.

I thought her smile couldn’t get any wider, but it does. It does, the minute she sees me. I keep singing as I motion to her to keep dancing. Her eyes sparkle brighter than the spotlights.

So I walk up the stage, watching her. Watching the girl I love jump around, run from the one end of the stage to the other, dancing for me, with me, because of me, as I sing to her the lyrics ofSaint Hope.

…

Tomorrow, this stadium will be flooded with people; it’s sold out several times over, after all. But right now, it’s just us two. Nothing and nobody else exists. I never take my eyes off her as I sing, and she glances up at me, sending me a kiss through the air. I’m already writing this moment into a song in my head, even though I am currently singing a different song to her.

My head is drowning in songs.

I want to keep doing this my whole life, I realize. I know it with a certainty I’ve never felt before. I have found what I want to do with my life: I want to keep singing to her as she dances. That’s all.

I do not expect this to be easy.

But I know it will be worth it. It is worth it already. And we haven’t even started yet.

…

I am a different man on stage tonight.

The crowds are something else, the loudest they have ever been. And I am singing to them with my heart full, my voice not breaking, my eyes wet only with happiness.

I close my eyes and sing The Coallive for the first time:

The coal

The coal

The coal has touched my lips.

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